The tool to be used for delivery of data to Eurostat is Eurostat's data transmission program EDAMIS. The EDAMIS Web Application (eWA) is installed in all National Statistical Institutes and a number of other organisations. A local coordinator is available in each NSI who can provide access to eWA and offer any assistance that might be necessary. Where an EDAMIS Web Application is not available, data providers can use the EDAMIS Web Portal (eWP). This is an internet based solution, available through an internet browser, which does not require a local installation.

Single User-ID (EU-LOGIN) for all services

In order to access the EDAMIS4 Info Space an active EU Login account is required (see chapter 8.3.2 if you need to create an EU Login). You can use the same credentials as for EDAMIS3. To register an account, the user can open the EDAMIS Web Portal link and will be forwarded to the LoginRegister section. Click the Create an account button and follow the instructions. After successfully registering your EU Login account, you will be able to access the EDAMIS4 Info Space. The preliminary registration is required as users are also able to use the forum to ask questions or to comment certain pages. Please see the EDAMIS4 How To Videos for further instructions like requesting access rights to specific Domains & Datasets in EDAMIS and many other useful features. For information concerning EDAMIS, or data transmission to Eurostat in general, you can consult the EDAMIS Information Space listed on the EDAMIS homepage (https:webgate.ec.europa.euedamis4) or you can contact directly the support team (ESTAT-DATA-METADATA-SERVICES@ec.europa.eu).

Figure 57 – EDAMIS Web Portal front page

V-Flows

In order to facilitate the data transmission exercises, Eurostat has set up a pre-validation tool (struval V-flows) that allows testing files and receive precise feedback on their compliance with the validation rules on both structure and content. V-Flows also use EDAMIS for data transmission, however:

• Each EDAMIS production dataset has a corresponding EDAMIS V-flow Dataset (e.g. for pre-validating an IFS_ADM_3 Dataset, choose the corresponding VIFS_ADM_3 Dataset in EDAMIS)
• This is not an official transmission: the V-flows data are not processed, further uploaded to the database or used for publications
• Their purpose is to offer a convenient validation service for reporting countries; a report equivalent to the one produced in the normal production flow is created (see 7.2 for further details)
• No local installation or similar is required to pre-validate a dataset

Encoding type

Every data file Eurostat receives is characterized by a certain encoding standard (i.e. the use of a certain “map” between bits and characters). The overwhelming majority of the files Eurostat receives use UTF-8 encoding, and Eurostat’s data validation and production systems expect this encoding to be used. 

As of 11th September only files using the UTF-8 encoding standard will be accepted by the validation systems of Eurostat. Files with any other encoding will be rejected by our structural validation service and we will return an error report. Please note that this rule for encoding is already in place in our Acceptance environment.

The change may result in the rejection of files which were hitherto accepted, in particular in the case of CSV files. Once the encoding is changed, such files will be processed as usual. Changing the encoding of your file to UTF-8 is a simple operation which poses no risk to the data nor has an otherwise negative impact on data submissions.

Should you or any of your data providers encounter a rejection due to encoding and need assistance in changing it, you may consult our quick guide. The national transmission coordinators have been informed of this upcoming change as well.

For any questions or comments related to the correct encoding of files, please contact the support at: ESTAT-SUPPORT-SDMX@ec.europa.eu